What's everyone's take on MM's first year?

Aviano90

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I don't know how you can use any word other than disastrous. I've never seen a pro team less prepared to play football than the September/October 2020 Cowboys.

That being said, here's how I try to objectively look at it:
  • Obviously none of us knew a pandemic was coming. The truth is, out of all the years we could have fired Garrett, we picked the absolute worst one. That's not a get-out-of-jail-free card for MM, because other orgs like WFT had similar challenges. But we seemed to handle it particularly poorly. Wondering if the complexity of Nolan's defense was just too much to learn in a virtual environment.
  • A wrath-of-God type of year for injuries. The injury hits started with Gerald McCoy and just kept coming. I've never seen a team so depleted, particularly the O-line. I think it would have been difficult for any coach to win with half a team.

Biggest Negatives:
  • Comically bad FA signings (not entirely MM's fault). Enabling non-competitive attitudes from Poe and Griffin for far too long. I don't think it's a coincidence that the team started to show life once we removed some of the bad apples.
  • Building/tolerating a lax culture. I just can't get over X. Woods', "Nobody plays hard all of the time" comments. Symptom of a larger problem (created long before MM got here, but part of his job was to fix it).
  • I still don't fully understand what has happened to Jaylon & LVE. They were good at football once, right? I understand that the DTs were unbelievably bad, but how many times did we see 54 & 55 sprinting to the wrong hole, or even jogging (looking at you 54)? Again, tolerated for way too long.
To sum up, I would judge MM's first season as a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad year. Hoping the sequel is better.
Nice to see a solid post talking football without trying to push an agenda, beat your chest about being right, or passive aggressively mocking others. You should post more often.
 

DenCWBY

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I hated the hire. Wasn't the route I wanted them to go.

He was worse than I thought.
:hammer:He had a bad start and there were no real improvements in his game time coaching that I could see. Your going to need more than busting a watermelon to motivate players. Just sad. The non challenge against the NYG was the icing on the cake as to just how he's been lost in the game throughout the season. Early on in the season, the timing on fake punts and other decisions were atrocious as well. An exceptional HC would have taken charge with the worst D in the league. He looked just like a puppet on the sidelines and each week we got more of the same. Honestly JG made better game time coaching decisions towards the end of his career.
 

DenCWBY

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I think the fact McCarthy had to wear a mask on the sidelines he was depriving his brain of oxygen and made some bad decisions. I really thought Rivera should of been offered the job. He probably wouldnt of taken it though. Being a defensive coach he saw what the Commanders Dline looked like and wanted that job.
This. Rivera just could not get himself to cry with Jerry during his interview and is no puppet. He's a no nonsense guy. He would have suited up to play LB just to give the others an example of how to play the position. The Wash team is going to be set for a while.
 

Big_D

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He has to do a complete turnaround on gametime decisions. Way too many ridiculous gambles and fakes. And they sucked at it on top of it. Team needs to be much smarter moving forward.
 

Bob-Lillys-War

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He did an amazing job, considering Garrett destroyed the cowboys culture for 10 years .
 

Havic

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He did OK with what he had to work with + Covid. He made alot of dumb in game decisions trying to find a spark and to get an edge. I dont blame him for it, but next season he has to show improvement or he should be shown the door.
 
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Techsass

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I've worked with managers that just observe when they come in that turned out OK. That usually only lasts about a month or so, though.

My original thought was that he was letting Kellen do his thing, but would eventually take over. I also thought we were actively tanking, albeit a little more subtly than Philly, with some of the crazy decisions that were made. I'm still clinging to the hope that this might be the case, but I have my doubts.

I'm OK with keeping him for next season, but I don't know what his overall plan is yet. If we don't see a sea change, then I think he was the wrong hire.

There were 16 teams that that had 7 or less wins this season BTW.
 
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CWR

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Terrible start but the team made adjustments constantly and found a way to be competitive. His use of "analytics" and challenges was laughably bad. He made some horrible decisions. I knew he'd get another year and the deck was stacked against him this year. I will hope for a better showing next season but if he would've been replaced I'd have been fine.
 

32BellyOption

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I’d give him an incomplete. I don’t think it’s fair to judge the guy since he didn’t have the luxury of mini camps or pre season games to teach and install his systems and get to know his personnel. Add to that the depleted offensive line and no Dak and I’m not sure how anyone could fairly judge his performance.
 

Ken

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What's everyone's take on MM's first year? I'm not sold on him personally, he made some boneheaded decisions for someone that's been a HC as long as he has...IMO
It was bad.

From boneheaded coaching decisions to bad staff decisions, to not leaving a discernable thumbprint of what his style is on the team.

Just bad but I was onboard with giving him another season.
 

TwentyOne

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What's everyone's take on MM's first year? I'm not sold on him personally, he made some boneheaded decisions for someone that's been a HC as long as he has...IMO

He made a lot of money. So i think it was a great year for him

He will try to stay for another year.

Did the Jersey sale numbers climb up ?
If so JJ will be all for having him for another year too.
 

GINeric

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If you need excuses, Jerry has 25 years worth of them.

Darn our luck!

Its not excuses, its a good question and reality. We weren't talking about Jerry and 25 years, I asked did that coach's team suffer as many injuries as MM team did this year?
 
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